AG Davenport Sues to Protect New Jersey From Financial Crimes

“This administration continues to do everything it can to unleash corruption, including unilaterally voiding a bipartisan law that would make it harder for criminals to hide behind anonymous shell companies,” said Attorney General Davenport. “We are suing to keep the law in place, so that law enforcement will have every tool available to hold wrongdoers to account.” The law, the Corporate Transparency Act, requires businesses to tell the federal government who actually owns and controls them. That matters because criminals often try to conceal their identities by using shell companies—entities that exist on paper but don’t do much of anything.

Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, known as FinCEN, has exempted 99.9% of businesses from the law, making it nearly useless. Congress passed the Corporate Transparency Act with bipartisan support in 2021. It created a Treasury database of business owners that law enforcement can use to trace dirty money, track down stolen assets, and uncover bribes and political payoffs.

In August 2026, the Trump Administration issued a rule exempting nearly every business from reporting. Then FinCEN went further, announcing it would delete the ownership information already in the database, records that likely include evidence of unsolved crimes. The states argue that would break multiple federal laws.

The lawsuit says FinCEN: Violated the Corporate Transparency Act; Skipped required legal steps before changing the rule; and Acted arbitrarily and without a reasonable explanation. If the states win, the court would throw out FinCEN’s rule and require the agency to keep collecting and maintaining the ownership database for law enforcement. District Court in Eugene and is led by Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield and Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul.

In addition to Attorney General Davenport, the attorneys general of Arizona, California, Colorado, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Rhode Island, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin, and the District of Columbia joined the complaint.